Why UK might miss out on view of Sun's 'solar tsunami' (... but there's still a chance)

Hopes that the UK might witness a spectacular light show didn't come to fruition last night - but there is still a small window of opportunity left.

Two minor solar storms that flared on Sunday are shooting tons of plasma directly at Earth.

Scientists
said residents in the UK might even get a chance to see unusual
northern lights as the coronal mass disturbs the the Earth's atmosphere.

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But even without the predictable cloud
cover over Great Britain, the prediction from the Geophysical Institute
at the University of Alaska was only a 4 (on a scale of 0 to 9) meaning
activity for last night was not visible.

But there are still a few days to go.

Usually only regions closer to the Arctic can see the aurora of rippling reds and greens, but solar storms pull them south.

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Early on Sunday morning, the Sun's surface erupted and blasted tons of plasma - ionised atoms - into interplanetary space.

'This eruption is directed right at us, and is expected to get here early in the day on August 4th,' said astronomer Leon Golub of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). 'It's the first major Earth-directed eruption in quite some time.'

The Geophysical Institute projections for last night's activity (left) show the level four band not being visible from the UK. It would have needed to be a level eight (right) for the Northern lights to be seen all over the UK

The eruption, called a coronal mass ejection, was caught on camera by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) - a spacecraft that launched in February. SDO provides better-than-HD quality views of the Sun at a variety of wavelengths.

'We got a beautiful view of this eruption,' said Golub. 'And there might be more beautiful views to come, if it triggers aurorae.'